4. We use them to aid us in interpreting the text of Scripture. For many of them quote very largely from the Sacred Volume; and as some lived near apostolical times, and many wrote in the language in which the New Testament was written, whilst others were persons of great inquiry and learning, and lived nearer to the localities of the sacred events than we do,—they had advantages which we do not possess. When, therefore, several or many of them concur in giving one uniform meaning to particular passages of Scripture, the evidence becomes very strong that they had the right interpretation: and even where only one writer gives any assistance upon any particular text, we shall frequently see reason for accepting his acceptation of it in preference to more modern suggestions. At the same time it is necessary to bear in mind, that most of them knew nothing of the original language of the Old Testament; and that they are often only _applying_ passages according to the prevalent habit (countenanced indeed by our Lord and his Apostles, but carried to various degrees of excess by most of the early writers) of seeking for mystical accommodations: and we must distinguish between application and interpretation. Now these methods of employing the writings of the Fathers are _à priori_ so obvious and so unobjectionable, that few writers of any credit object to the principle: but as the results of the application of the principle are highly inconvenient to those who have rejected the doctrine or discipline universally upheld in the primitive ages of the Church, two lines of argument have been taken to nullify this application. And as they have been lately revived in various ways, and particularly by the re‐ publication of the work from which most of them have been derived, viz. Daillé’s Treatise _on the Right Use of the Fathers_, I have thought proper to notice them in that brief manner which the limits of a preface permit. Some, indeed, of the objections brought forward ought to be considered as simply cautions to the inquirer, and as such I have already treated them; the chief remaining ones I now proceed to mention. (1.) Some contend that, however reasonable in the abstract this sort of appeal to the Fathers may appear, it is beset with such difficulties, that it is useless in practice: that we have so few early writings, that those we have are so adulterated, that we have so many forgeries in the names of early writers, that the writings of the Fathers are so difficult to understand, that they so often give the opinions of others without any intimation that they are not their own, that they so constantly altered their views as they grew older, and that it so frequently happened that the men who are now of most note were in a minority of their contemporaries,—that it is practically useless to attempt to apply the Fathers to modern use.